


The Greatest American Hero Job

by hufflepirate



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Gen, Greatest American Hero AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 18:51:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7813231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepirate/pseuds/hufflepirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mild-mannered Alec Hardison is a computer teacher/in-school-suspension monitor (and sometime hacker) who was on a field trip with his students when he was given a supersuit by a saucer full of aliens.</p><p>Unfortunately, he lost the instructions and now he has to figure out how to make it work by trial-and-error, with the help of Eliot Spencer, an FBI agent (probably) who the aliens told him to work with, a surprisingly charming cat burgler named Parker and, every once in a while, his lawyer Sophie Devereaux and her husband Nathan Ford.</p><p>Note: Sophie and Nate aren't in this one-shot, but if it turns into a collection of one-shots, they may turn up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Greatest American Hero Job

**Author's Note:**

> If you're not familiar with The Greatest American Hero, it's a show that ran from 1981-1983, and the plot is that... well... a mild-mannered high school teacher is given a supersuit by a saucer full of aliens and then loses the instructions! I was rewatching it the other day, and it just seemed to scream 'I would make a great AU.' Also, it's a lot of fun, even though it's also pretty dated at this point.
> 
> Generally speaking, the events of the pilot of Greatest American Hero have already happened pretty much exactly like they happened to Ralph, minus the romantic elements, but if you haven't seen it the important stuff is all in the summary.

Hardison's flying lessons were not going well. Eliot insisted that he keep trying, but there was only so long he could keep going on like this, teaching all day, catching what sleep he could until 1:00 in the morning, and then "flying" until the sun was about to come up before he was back home to shower, get dressed for school, and start it all over again.

He'd figured out that he could fly straight if he had a heavy enough counterbalance, but of course, that wasn't good enough for Eliot. Something about how he "wouldn't always be able to carry a big lamp around" and he "needed some real skills" and "dammit, Hardison, just do it." So here he was again, at 2 am, careening between buildings and trying not to hit any of them.

He knew, by now, that he shouldn't turn to look behind him after a close call. He knew, because the last five times he'd done that, he'd crashed into something else. So he forced his head back to the front faster this time. Fast enough to realize that the building he was about to crash into already _had_ someone on it, someone wearing all black and dangling from a rope attached to the roof. He was so surprised, it didn't occur to him to try to turn, and he crashed straight into the side of the building.

The first time he'd hit a wall, he was two stories up and he'd bounced off and landed on the ground. The times he'd done it recently, he'd started from the ground and hadn't made it very high before he crashed anyway. Now, he was 35 stories up, because he'd convinced Eliot he should start with a counterweight and see how well he could do after he dropped it, and he wasn't sure he could take a fall like this, even in the suit.

He scrabbled around trying to catch ahold of something, _anything_ on the building. Its glass walls were slick under his fingers even once he could touch them, and he grew more and more frantic until finally, 5 floors down, he caught ahold of a narrow ledge with his fingertips.

He was going too fast for such a small ledge to stop him, his fingers giving out under the pressure, but it put him in a slightly better position where he had more contact with the glass and could slow himself down a little bit more. A few floors later, he caught another ledge and finally stopped.

He hung there for a few seconds, just trying to breathe, before a voice in his ear asked, _"Dammit, Hardison, what_ was _that?"_

" _Crashing_ , Eliot! It was _crashing_! And if you're gonna sound judgmental about it, I'm gonna go home, ok? I'm gonna go _home,_ get some _sleep_ like a normal human being, leave you to run around at night _all by yourself_ , how do you like _that_ , man?"

There was a long pause in his ear, but Alec was well and truly freaking out, now, and he couldn't stand the silence. "I mean, _shoot_ , man, how'd you like it if _you_ were the one up here, hanging off the side of a building?"

" _Been there, done that_ ," Eliot sounded frustrated, but not necessarily directly at him for once. " _Just_ calm down _, Hardison. I'll come get you_."

" _How?_ Man, I'm 20 stories high! Maybe more!"

" _I'll come get you_." Now Eliot really did sound irritated _at_ him, but Hardison didn't have time to worry about that, because a small woman with blonde hair was dangling next to him on a rope.

"You seem upset," she said calmly, like it was a casual observation in a normal conversation, and not - whatever this was.

"Lady," he answered, "I'm hanging from a building by my _fingertips_ , I'm like 500 feet in the air - yeah. _I'm upset_. 

She looked down, made a face, and announced, "375 feet."

"375 feet. You just looked down, and you said 375 feet, like you just _know_ that."

" _Who are you talking to?"_

Of course. This wasn't weird or stressful enough. Eliot had to growl at him about it, like he'd asked this crazy-ass lady to be dangling off buildings in the middle of the night and come talk to him. He didn't dignify the question with a response. His fingers hurt, and he had to keep holding on.

"You know," the woman said thoughtfully, "Red is a _terrible_ color for a heist."

"Yeah, 'cause this ain't a heist, woman, why would this be a heist?"

"Well, it's not a heist _now_ , obviously. Did you do _any_ research before you tried to bust through that window? Everybody knows you have to cut through these kinds of windows, not break them. And you'd just have set off the alarms, crashing through like that, anyway."

"No, I mean, it's _never_ been a heist. Are you pulling a heist? On an office building? What are you gonna steal out of an office building?"

" _Somebody's pulling a heist on that building? Dammit, Hardison, you ain't ready for that yet! What were you thinking?_ "

"I'm not-" Hardison spluttered, "It was an _accident_."

"Hmm," the woman answered, "Probably for the best. You're a terrible thief."

"That's 'cause I'm _not_ a thief!"

_"Ok, I'm at the bottom of the building, but I'm not sure how I'm gonna get you down."_

"Oh _hell_ no, man, you are just gonna have to _figure out_ how to get me down from here, because if you _don't_ , my fingers are gonna give out in the next 30 seconds and I will make a _point_ of landing on you."

Eliot growled something in response, but he didn't hear it, because at the same time, the woman next to him wrinkled her forehead and said, "Oh, are you losing your grip? That was quick. Well, here."

She wrapped her arms around him, and his fingers gave out from the surprise.

"You really _are_ bad at this," she said, still as calmly as ever.

She was deceptively strong, holding him around the chest like it was nothing, but dangling from a strange woman's arms with his arms and legs out over open air was even more nerve-wracking than hanging from his fingers, so he reached back to grab ahold of her arms as much as he could.

"Don't _wiggle_ ," she said, with mild exasperation, "I've got you."

" _What are you doing, Hardison? Who_ is _that?"_

He ignored Eliot, focusing on the woman who held his life in her hands. "Not to, uh - I mean - I'm glad you didn't let me fall. I'm-" he looked down, but it made him feel faint, "I'm _really_ glad you didn't let me fall. But why are you helping me?"

"Oh!" she said cheerfully, "You didn't set the alarms off when you crashed, so I can still pull off the heist. But if you go splat, then somebody finds you, they call an ambulance, they call the cops . . . you know how it is. And anyway, I feel kind of bad for anybody as bad at stealing as you."

He wasn't sure how to tell her that he wasn't a thief, but he also wasn't sure he wanted to, if being a bad thief made her feel like he wasn't a threat.

"So," he started instead, "What, uh - what's in this office building that's worth stealing?"

She smiled, and it suddenly occurred to him that she might be saving him, but she wasn't _safe_. "Expensive painting. This lawyer guy has it hanging in his office so he can show it off to his rich clients. He's pretty much _asking_ me to steal it."

She started moving them up toward the roof, and Alec kept holding onto her as much as he could while he updated Eliot, "We're headed up to the roof." He'd never been gladder that he'd made a set of earpieces that didn't need to be touched to work. Eliot just grunted in response.

"Of course," the woman answered, "No use getting caught now going down. Nobody really looks up when they're walking around at night - not in the city where you can't see the stars anyway."

Alec almost laughed, "I hope not! I crash enough with just Eliot watching."

"How did you do that flying thing, anyway?"

Hardison didn't have an answer for that. He'd told his lawyer, Sophie, about the aliens, because he didn't have any other explanation for why he'd been stuck in the hospital in a superhero outfit, and she hadn't believed him until he picked up a car with his bare hands.

"It's uh - it's a long story. And anyway, I'm thinking about giving it up. I'm no good at it."

" _What are you giving up?"_ Eliot asked, " _You are_ not _quitting on me, Hardison. Remember when we saved the President? Remember that? We have work to do_."

They were still moving upward, and Hardison decided he could answer Eliot once his backup actually got around to rescuing him.

The woman looked thoughtful, gazing upward at the rope above them like she was thinking about something. "Well, do you _want_ to do it?"

"Do I _want_ to do it? Do what? Dangle off buildings for the rest of my life hoping Eliot can get me down again?"

"I _like_ dangling off buildings."

"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure _you're_ crazy. No offense."

"I dunno. I'm not the one pulling a heist in red pajamas."

"They're not pajamas!" He wasn't sure why he was defending the suit. He didn't even _like_ the suit. He could have designed a _much_ better one if they'd let him pick what he looked like, even without the whole losing-the-instructions thing.

" _Hardison, do_ not _tell that woman about the suit_."

"Look, the suit was a gift from the aliens. They gave me a set of instructions on how to work it, but I lost those, so now I'm just trying to figure out how it works and what I'm supposed to be doing with it."

"Aliens are _real_? I _knew_ it!"

"Dammit _, Hardison!"_

He wasn't sure which response scared him more.

"So, what did these aliens look like? Were they weird colors? Did they speak English? How did you understand them? Did they try to probe you? Did they _actually_ probe you?"

"They uh - they sent us Eliot's dead partner with the suit, I think so they wouldn't scare us, and they used the radio. And nobody got probed."

"Hmm," she said, slowing their ascent as they reached the top of the building, "I always think it's a better when somebody gets probed. Then at least they get to see the inside of the ship. How are we ever supposed to figure out who they are if nobody gets on the ships?"

"Oh, so _you_ wanna be probed?"

" _That better not be you trying to flirt, I swear to-_ " Hardison tuned Eliot out.

"Of course not, silly! I want to _break in_."

They reached the top, and she added, "Ok, grab the edge so you can pull yourself up."

Alec had never been gladder to hold onto the edge of a building with his own two hands. He made it up onto the roof with a little extra help from his mystery woman, and then rolled over onto his side to lay on the concrete and breathe for a minute.

A noise at the edge of the roof caught his ear, but when he looked, the woman wasn't standing there. Unwilling to stand up just yet, he rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled back over to the edge, only to find that the woman was halfway flying herself, zipping down to the level she'd been at to begin with.

"Aren't you coming up?" he shouted down at her.

" _Of course I am, you idiot, I'm in the stairwell. You're gonna be fine._ "

Alec snorted. "Not you, Eliot, _her_."

" _Her, who? You are definitely not ready to start any actual superheroing yet, Hardison, leave her alone._ "

It was easier to feel like he should be making his own choices, now that he was on solid ground again, so he pushed back again, "Dammit, man, I saved the _President_ , and I _am_ leaving her alone, it's just-" he raised his voice, "Hey! Lady! I don't even know your name!"

She looked up at him, smile only just visible as a sudden shiny flash of teeth, and shouted back, "My name's Parker! Call me if the aliens come back!"

"I don't have your number!"

Instead of answering, she pulled out something he couldn't see very well from this angle, cut a neat hole in the window in front of her, and swung into the building.

"Damn," he whispered to himself.

"Damn is right!" Eliot's voice, coming in at double volume between the earpiece and the fact that the man was suddenly standing right behind him, made Alec jump, if you could call twitching awkwardly on his hands and knees jumping, "What is _wrong_ with you?"

Alec moved back from the ledge and sat up. "What's wrong with _me_? What's wrong with _you_? Running around all 'I'll save you, Hardison,' and then you get here and you just _watch_? I had to hitch a ride from a _crazy lady_ who steals _paintings_ out of _office buildings_."

"Well, maybe if you hadn't lost the _instructions_ , we wouldn't be - wait, is she breaking into this building again right now?"

"Yeah, man, I told you, she's crazy, she's like - 20 pounds of crazy in a 5-pound bag, but she saved my life so I think you're right, we just oughta... leave her alone."

"We just oughta - No, Hardison, no. We should _not_ leave her alone. We should _get the hell out of here while we still can_. Do you _want_ to explain to the police that actually _,_ we _weren't_ part of the theft, we were just out trying to teach you to _fly_ in your _alien supersuit_? I don't wanna lose my badge, man! You can't pull this kind of crap!"

Eliot hauled him to his feet and shoved him toward the stairwell, still talking, "You make me break into a building to get you out and you don't tell me someone else is already breaking in? What's the matter with you?"

On their way out through the lobby, it took Hardison almost a minute to figure out that the guard sitting at the desk behind the computer wasn't reacting to them because he was unconscious. "Eliot what did you-"

"Why'd you think it was me, huh? Could have been Miss Five-Pound-Bag back there-"

It hadn't been. Alec knew it more by instinct than logic, but Eliot's grip on his arm, even tighter now, told him not to say anything.

 

*****

 

Hardison's first thought when Eliot dropped him off in front of his apartment building was that at least he'd gotten home early tonight. Then he had to smile at that, because when in the hell had getting home at 3:00 in the morning become 'early'? He'd been a night owl in college, sure, but he'd been one _indoors_ , with his computer and his headset and his WoW friends and he wasn't sure how his life had gotten so - physical.

Once he'd made it into the apartment itself, he stared around himself, at a loss, for a moment. He wanted out of this stupid suit. He should take a shower. He should try to sleep. He should stay up and do something to de-stress until the adrenaline of the whole thing wore off. He should play Mario Kart. He should watch whatever stupid movie Syfy was playing overnight. He should see if BBC America was playing Star Trek again. Sometimes they played Star Trek in the middle of the night, which was weird, because Star Trek wasn't even British, but who was he to complain? He wasn't actually paying for BBC America anyway. His mind kept spinning with possibilities, and he knew he couldn't sleep regardless.

He sat down at his computer, landing awkwardly on his cape so that it pulled at his neck. He took it off, frustrated, and woke the computer up. Then he stopped himself. Googling 'Parker' wasn't going to do a single damned thing. He didn't even know if it was a first name or a last name. If he was going to find her, he was going to have to do something he hadn't done for a while, something he'd sworn off doing when he realized crime was gonna drag him away from his Nana and started that second major in secondary education.

He sat stock still for a moment. "What are you doing, man?" he whispered to himself.

He was still in the suit. His fingers, now that he could see them in the light, were scraped up from catching the ledges on the office building, but they didn't seem to be bleeding anymore. He should clean them up. He should clean them up and then slather them in every disinfectant he had and put band-aids around them and hope he could still type tomorrow if he had to redo one of his recent demonstrations for his one-and-only computer science class. But he still had enough adrenaline in his system not to really feel them.

His fingers started moving across the keys.

Half an hour later, he'd made some headway on hiding his location, setting up for the hack, but he'd also started to feel tired, and his fingers were throbbing. He stripped out of the suit, tended to his hands, and grabbed an Orange Squeeze out of the fridge. He'd given up the gummy frogs with the hacking, which seemed silly, now, so he ripped open a package of fruit snacks, instead. The ones he'd bought because they had real fruit juice in them and made him feel like he might be a real adult. They just weren't the same.

Two hours later, he'd learned that no one else knew whether Parker was a first name or a last name, either. He'd also learned that while he felt pretty rusty, he could still get in to the FBI database, and that as uncertain as he'd started to feel about whether Eliot was actually, _really_ FBI lately, he wasn't ready to poke into that can of worms just yet.

He hoped Eliot was FBI. It would be nice to have a guy on the inside if anybody figured out he'd been in the system. He hadn't touched anything. He'd just looked. And it wasn't like Parker's file was really _highly_ classified. It would be fine. It had to be fine.

It would also be nice to know that the other guy in this alien thing with him was real FBI and not some scary dude who knocked out security guards and _wasn't_ FBI.

He double checked the number he'd written down on the pad beside him, so that even if he got caught there would be no digital trace of what he was after, and closed out of everything, retreating out of cyberspace and back to the real world where - _oh shit_ \- where if he didn't get in the shower _right now_ , he was going to be late to school.

 

*****

 

He was late to school. It was an assembly day, some pep rally nonsense he didn't care about, but since his in-school suspension kids were in rare form today, the Principal noticed anyway, and yelled at him in the parking lot.

His suspension kids were bad enough, but today even the kids in the computer science class he taught while the gym teacher took the ISS room for a period were difficult and distracted, arguing over something he couldn't fully get a grip on when he was this tired. All-nighters were one thing, but an all-nighter after several nights of superheroing was something else entirely.

By the time the school day was over, he felt like he'd been beaten, though he wasn't sure if that was because of all the crashing he'd been doing in the suit or because he was just so damned tired. Either way, he couldn't possibly face another night of "flying" with Eliot, so as soon as he got home, he did the dumb thing he had told himself, all the way home, that he wouldn't do.

As the phone rang, he started to have his doubts again. _Dang it, what did I call her for? What if she's in the middle of something? Should've just texted. But then, who knows if this is even a cell number. What if it's not even_ her _number? The FBI could have just slapped any old phone number up or she could have changed it or- shit! What if the FBI is listening in? What if they know I called her?_

"Hello?"

"Uh," he said, startled by the fact that she'd actually answered, "Hello. Hi! Um, Parker!"

"Sir, I think you have the wrong number," she said, with an edge of amusement in her voice that didn't jive with what he expected for a wrong number call, "This is Alice White?"

He was pretty sure the voice was Parker's. He remembered it pretty well, and he was sure that whoever he was talking to _wasn't_ Alice White, so in a split second he made a decision.

"No, Parker, it's me. Ha-" he stopped himself from saying his real name, in case the FBI was listening. "Uh, the guy in the suit last night, the one you saved."

"Oh!" she said cheerfully, "It's you! That's ok, then. See any more aliens yet?"

He laughed, "Don't I wish! But no, I was actually calling about-" About what, exactly? Now that he was trying to put it into words, he wasn't sure he could. "Well, look," he said eventually, "I can't take another night of crashing around like that, and you're, um, presumably good at finding things, and I wondered if you'd come with me to look for the instructions."

"Were they stolen?" she asked immediately, "Are in a safe? Are there guards?" If the FBI _was_ actively monitoring this number, she seemed not to know it.

"No, no, I just _lost_ 'em. They're in the desert somewhere, but I think-" he couldn't say Eliot's name, either. "My friend's gonna kill me on accident if he keeps pushing me like this, so I've gotta find those instructions! Last time I tried, I saw the aliens again, but I couldn't get any more instructions. They're not great listeners."

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Then Parker's curiosity seemed to get the best of her and she answered, "Well, if the aliens might come back, I guess I'm in. Meet me-"

No! They couldn't plan this on the phone! Not if the FBI was listening. Alec interrupted her - "I'll meet you two blocks south of where we met, at the far corner of the second block, at 4:00 in the afternoon."

She sounded almost like she was trying not to laugh as she said, "Sure! I'll see you there."

 

*****

 

As he parked Lucille a few blocks from his established meeting place and thought about the fact that if the FBI was listening, they might also have figured out that last night's robbery was Parker, Alec wondered if this had been a terrible idea. It probably had. He should probably skip out on this meeting right now.

He pulled the hood of his red Flash sweatshirt further forward, like that was going to help, and got out of the van to walk to the meeting point. He'd bought the thing right after he got the suit, as a joke to himself, and he hadn't worn it much, because the more he failed at using the suit, the less he felt like he was living up to the hoodie. But he thought it might help Parker find him. At least the FBI didn't know what 'the suit' he'd mentioned on the phone was.

He considered calling Eliot, but he didn't really need to be yelled at, right now. Not when he was still this sore and bloody-fingered and angry with Eliot anyway. Instead, he walked to the corner, trying to figure out how exactly he was going to wait for Parker without drawing suspicion and getting the police called on him for loitering.

The hoodie was starting to feel like an even worse idea as he walked up to the corner and realized he hadn't specified which "far corner" he meant and she might go to the wrong side of the block. Should he stand here and wait? Should he walk back and forth between the corners and hope it made people less likely to notice him? How long should he wait before he decided she must be at the other end of the block?

His mind was still spinning with the possibilities when she poked him in the shoulder from behind and he jumped halfway out of his skin.

"Ah!"

"Ha!" she said cheerfully, "Hi!"

He turned around to find Parker grinning at him, in a pair of jeans and a blue t-shirt, with a lightweight black sweater over it. She looked surprisingly normal, for a cat burglar he'd met dangling off the side of a building. He felt bad, for a moment, about being a nerd in a trying-too-hard hoodie instead of looking casually normal.

"Hi Parker," he answered, "It's uhh... It's actually 'Hardison.' Alec Hardison."

She nodded, "Makes sense. You could have said that on the phone, you know."

He shook his head. "The FBI has that number for you. I wasn't sure if they were listening."

She raised an eyebrow. "Do they?" she asked, pulling a burner phone out of her pocket and looking at it, "Huh. That _does_ explain why they showed up the last time I was working on commission." After a moment, she shrugged and put it back in her pocket, "I'll throw it out once we get on our way. Where are we going? Have the aliens ever come around during the day? Why aren't we waiting for it to be night?"

Parker ditched the phone halfway back to Lucille, but kept peppering him with questions about the aliens the whole way. He was beginning to regret calling her for the _opposite_ reason, now, not because she might get him caught but because maybe she was even crazier than he'd thought, and maybe that was going to be a problem.

At the van, he ditched his hoodie, and immediately felt more comfortable. The henley he was wearing under it was both lighter weight and plainer, and he didn't feel quite so obvious in it. No one would be looking at him and Parker. Not for any reason at all.  Not for any supernatural reason, anyway.

 

*****

 

For a crazy person, Parker was actually surprisingly good company. It was nice to talk to someone who believed everything he said about the aliens without question, and her willingness to climb most of the way out the window while he was driving was both frightening and endearing. It was a good way to look for the instructions without stopping, but he felt awkward looking over to see if she'd found anything and finding her butt at eye level.

When they got hungry, he discovered that Parker ate as badly as he did. His nana made (affectionate) fun of him for eating like he was still in college, but when they talked about dinner, Parker mentioned absently that her favorite food was Rocket Os. They ended up eating gas station hot dogs while sitting in the back of the van with the seats folded down.

They looked for the instructions for another hour after dinner, but not as intensely. Parker had lost interest, mostly, and instead of hanging out the window, she went back to peppering him with questions, this time about flying.

Eventually, she started giving him advice on flying, which was pretty rich, given that she'd never even _really_ seen him try. Somehow, though, he found himself listening to her anyway. He knew Eliot had no idea what it was like to be in the suit - Eliot hadn't believed in what was going on any more than he had, at first - and any time he told Hardison what to try it was hard not to roll his eyes. Parker might have been crazy, but at least she was willing to believe whole-heartedly in the whole alien thing (which, suit or not, was sometimes still a challenge for him) and she had some real experience with heights.

Somewhere between the story of the time she had to free fall off a cliff and then swim into some rich guy's mansion and the story of the time she used a hang glider to get onto the roof of a bank, he found himself agreeing to put on the suit, and before he knew it, he was pulling over to change his clothes.

 

*****

 

It he had to listen to Parker _very calmly_ remarking that he'd focus better if he stopped screaming so much, he was going to just leave her in the desert. He'd initially thought she was better than Eliot, but now he thought that might just be an illusion caused by the fact that the things she shouted at him were marginally more encouraging.

The truth was that most of Parker's advice seemed more helpful, and he did seem to be doing a little bit better, but he still just didn't think he was cut out for flying.

He and Parker kept going away from town, with Parker driving the van to keep up when he managed one of his few reasonably good flights. His best flight ended when he looked down and realized just how bad a driver she was and crashed before she could do any permanent damage to Lucille.

Going in one direction instead of doubling back turned out to be an even bigger mistake than letting Parker drive, because he didn't see Eliot coming until it was too late. He realized the man was coming only when he could hear the engine of Eliot's little red sports car screaming as he drove well over the speed limit toward them.  "Oh no."

Parker seemed as startled as he was. "Is that the MIB? Are they after you?"

"The MI- what?" Alec spluttered, "No! That's Eliot."

"Oh!" Parker exclaimed, "Your imaginary friend from the other night!"

"Does he look imaginary to you?" he answered, raising an eyebrow. "He's an FBI agent.  He was there when I met the aliens.  Damn, and I think he's pissed, too."

"Should we run? We can run."

Alec shook his head. "Lucille's not fast enough."

"So, fly us out of here!"

Hardison laughed, "Yeah, right. Just-" he waved his hand, whistling an ascending note, "fly us out of here."  He looked over his shoulder.  Eliot wasn't slowing down.  "Dammit."

Parker narrowed her eyes for a moment, staring him down, then said, "Fine, then help me hide in the back of the van. The FBI's no good for me."

"Yeah," he answered, opening the back doors and giving her a hand up, "Hop in, I've got a blanket back here somewhere. Nana always insisted. In case I break down somewhere in the cold."

Parker stopped still for a moment, looking at him. "You have a Nana?"

"Yeah, she raised me." There was more to the story, but it didn't seem like the time for it.

"She sounds nice."

He found the blanket, but it was too late.  Eliot's car had screeched to a stop behind them.

"What the hell, Hardison?" Eliot was shouting as he got out of the car and in a split second, Parker had leapt into Alec's arms and wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.

"Go!" she shouted, directly into his ear.

"That better not be who I think it is." Eliot was livid, and after one glance backward at him, Alec started running in spite of himself, reaching up toward the sky and leaving Parker to hold on.

Three steps later, he was in the air and it was immediately apparent that while he could fly with the right counterweight, having Parker wrapped around his chest was  _not_ the right counterweight.

Parker realized it too and tried to lean toward his right, but it only threw him off further. "Keep your arm up!" she shouted. He tried, but it didn't seem to do much of anything. "We're falling!"

He was too afraid to answer, frantically trying to keep them in the air even though he wasn't even sure how he was supposed to be doing it. They were sinking rapidly and Eliot was still shouting below them.

"Dammit, Hardison!"

"Hold on to me!" Parker yelled abruptly.

"Wha-" before he could finish asking what she meant, she'd flung her arms out like wings, keeping her legs locked around him, and he threw an arm around her back more out of instinct than intention. He kept his other arm held straight ahead, because he didn't think he had a prayer of keeping them airborne if he didn't, but couldn't stop the long, drawn out scream that made its way out of his throat, not now that he'd let himself open his mouth.

Parker leaned heavily to the side, holding one arm much higher than the other, and pulling him along with her so that he felt like he was tipping sideways, like he might fall out of the sky on his side instead of his front for once.

Then, all of a sudden, something seemed to click and they weren't falling anymore. They might even be - flying higher? But that couldn't be right. He was too top-heavy with Parker wrapped around his torso, and it wasn't like she was connected to the suit and - and they were definitely getting higher.

"Woohoo!" Parker shouted, just as he stopped screaming.

"We're doing it!" he exclaimed.

"I know! Isn't it great? You should tell your aliens to send _me_ a suit. Do you know how many heists I could pull if I could _fly_ away with the loot?

"Uh-uh," he said, "I'm supposed to be _fighting_ crime in this thing, not committing it."

"That's no fun," she said, making a slight adjustment to her arms that sent them sailing smoothly to the side without pulling him off balance enough to fall.

"Man, Eliot's mad enough already-" he said absently.

"Actually," Parker answered, looking down below them, "He looks pretty happy now."

"What?" Alec looked down, craning his neck to get a glimpse of Eliot.

"Arm up!" Parker shouted as they started to drift downward again. "You can look later."

He snapped his head and arm up, and then it really sunk in - he was flying. He was even flying _well_. It felt good, for once.

When Parker let out another whoop, he actually joined her.

 

*****

 

They were several miles farther along by the time they came back down, far enough that Eliot had had to run back to his car and follow him that way, tearing through the desert alongside the road even though it couldn't be good for his car.

The landing wasn't his smoothest, but Parker didn't seem to mind. She laid on her back in the dust, laughing, while he scrambled to his feet.

Eliot wasn't far behind them, his car flinging more dust up into the air as it stopped. Alec wasn't sure what to expect as Eliot got out of the car and came toward him, but none of his half-baked expectations included being pulled suddenly into a huge bear hug.

"You got it, Hardison!"

Alec wasn't fast enough to hug Eliot back before the man was shoving him away, hard.

"Man, what the hell were you thinkin'?"

Alec wasn't sure whether to answer Eliot's question or not, but Parker beat him to it either way.

"I think you mean _we_ got it. He's still listing to the left on his own."

"And who the hell are you?"

"I'm Pa - Alice White."

"You're that lady from the building the other night. The thief."

"Alice White isn't."

"Yeah, but you're not Alice White."

"Am so."

"Look, Eliot," Alec interrupted, "I know she's not exactly your traditional superhero, I mean unless you count the times Selina Kyle was on the hero side of things, but she's really-"

"No," Eliot cut him off, "No, we are not letting a _thief_ be a part of this team. If the aliens wanted her, the aliens would have told her. Or us."

"And now we suddenly care about doing what the aliens want?"

"No, Hardison, I just think-"

" _I_ think that's the best I've flown since we saved the President, and maybe you'd better focus on finding us a job to do and let Parker and I work on figuring out the suit."

"Or," Parker suggested cheerfully, "We could see if it works if _I_ put on the suit."

"No!" both men said at once.

"The aliens said it would only work for me," Alec explained, hoping to soften the blow a little.

"And I ain't giving alien technology to a known thief."

Parker rolled her eyes, "Fine. But don't come crawling to me when you need somebody to get you around a security system."

"Why would we need somebody to do that? We've got the suit."

" _I_ 've got the suit," Hardison corrected.

"Whatever man, that's not the point. We don't need a thief on the team."

Alec looked down at Parker for a minute, then stood up to Eliot, a little more confidently this time than he'd ever been before, "Yeah, but I think I want one. If she wants to come with us. And anyway, she's good with heights and she doesn't think we're crazy."

"That lawyer Sophie doesn't think we're crazy. Add her to the team!"

"Sooophie. SophIE." Parker tried out the name like she'd never said it before. "I could work with a Sophie. I mean on this. On the other stuff, I work alone."

"Yeah, well, I did too until this idiot and his bus full of juvenile delinquents got stuck out in the desert with me."

Hardison bit his lip to keep himself from saying something he couldn't take back in defense of his students. They weren't all bad, after all. Not even the bad ones.

"It's not like you helped," he said finally, "I mean what was that, even?" He turned toward Parker, "One of my kids bumps into him and tries to start something, and he just leans back in his chair and says 'If you're looking for trouble, you've just come across the West Coast distributor.'"

"What the hell was that, Hardison?" Eliot squawked.

"It was your accent, man, I dunno, I'm not-"

"West coast distributor," Parker repeated, making the vowels crisp like she was testing them out, too. "I like it. I guess I can work with him, if the aliens think he's alright."

"You guess _you_ can work with _me_? I hate to break it to you sweetheart but that's not how this is gonna work."

"No," Alec interrupted, "It's not. Because you're _both_ gonna be working with _me_. I'm the one with the suit, I'm the one who gets to decide."

"Hardison-"

"I mean it, Eliot. I'm sick and tired of doing everything your way. The great Eliot Spencer, FBI. But if the aliens wanted you to have the suit, you'd have it. We're working with Parker."

Eliot narrowed his eyes for a moment, studying him, and Alec felt deeply uncomfortable, and a little frightened. Then his eyes relaxed again. "Fine. But she's gonna have to brush all that dirt off before she gets in my car. And no more flying away from the road!"

Hardison and Parker broke into smiles at the same time and Eliot grunted at them, turning abruptly on his heel, "I mean it! Don't track all that dust into my car!"

Alec clambered into the back seat with Parker, just to make a point, but once they were on the way back to Lucille and Parker was chattering away about the mechanics of their flight and how she thought he could learn it with just a few more flights as long as he kept his left shoulder up, he realized Eliot didn't actually seem half as grumpy about Parker as he wanted them to think he was.

He leaned back in his seat and smiled. He'd had one good flight, he'd found a new teammate to back him up against Eliot, and he had every excuse to take a night off. Things were finally looking up.


End file.
